Judgment_paragraph 100 · Stichting Certificatie Kraanverhuurbedrijf (SCK) and Federatie van Nederlandse Kraanbedrijven (FNK) v Commission of the European Communities (T-213/95, T-18/96)

100The applicants put forward a single plea in support of their claim. They submit that the contested decision is nonexistent inasmuch as the Commission failed to rule in its operative part on the application for an exemption made under Article 85(3) of the Treaty. It was essential to rule on that application in the operative part, since compliance with the Community rules on competition must be ascertained in relation to Article 85 as a whole (Joined Cases T-528/93, T-542/93, T-543/93 and T-546/93 Métropole Télévision and Others v Commission [1996] ECR II-649) and only the operative part of an act is capable of producing legal effects (Case T-138/89 NBV and NVB v Commission [1992] ECR II-2181, paragraph 31, and Case T-50/92 Fiorani v Parliament [1993] ECR II-555, paragraph 39). The Commission's decision of 13 April 1994, adopted on the basis of Article 15(6) of Regulation No 17, has no relevance in that regard. Such decisions are adopted after only preliminary scrutiny and are therefore not equivalent to final decisions. Furthermore, even if they could be regarded as final decisions, the decision in this case was concerned only with SCK's prohibition on hiring and did not contain a ruling on the practices notified by FNK, so that there was still no decision on whether Article 85(3) might apply to those practices.

Stichting Certificatie Kraanverhuurbedrijf (SCK) and Federatie van Nederlandse Kraanbedrijven (FNK) v Commission of the European Communities (T-213/95, T-18/96)

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